My beginners impression: KGS Software development looks as it has stalled. Pretty dated compared to (the look of) IGS clients. Gopanda2 is sexy. 00b, Especially the KGS Android client. You even cannot actively do match requests. You cannot play 9x9 games. It is sooooo basic...
All in all, compared with chess, the Go software department is very weak. Often unfinished, weird design decisions... A world full of 800x600 etc etc It's strange, because there are many Go players on Earth, at least in the asian hemisphere...
For reading game reviews I've not found better than the KGS client using local edit.
Certainly if you run the CGoban.jar client you have the functionality you may be looking for. And with KGS plus I believe you get some nice benefits.
If a more modern looking client is what you're after, try OGS or Tygem. Personally, I'll stick to KGS and DGS.
I believe it was recently announced that the KGS client/server protocol has now been documented and I believe non official clients are now tolerated/encouraged.
I wouldn't be surprised if this means new, better looking, clients appear. Personally I'm hoping someone makes one for iOS finally.
Ever used any of the ICC clients? (ICC = Internet Chess Club)
They have 3 clients all of which are ancient and look like they're for Windows 3.1.
BlitzIn, Dasher and ICC for Windows are the clients' names.
But guess which of the clients are most popular with GM-titled, long-time users of ICC? It goes in descending order of popularity, from oldest client to newest client.
Then for FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) there is Babas Chess which isn't exactly a modern-looking program. Or you could use the still-popular XBoard which was designed (I think) in the early 90's.
Moving on, the "nice" looking chess clients are Lichess and chess.com. Lichess is a great open-source effort and actually provides some of the code base for OGS. Isn't OGS a nice website to play on? It's certainly benefited from the AlphaGo matches bringing new players onto it.
Chess.com is a bit of an exception because it's so popular, they simply have more grunt to do the UI updates. However, even their website (IMHO) doesn't look as nice as OGS. It's less customisable too.
While we're discussing bankrolling, ever used the Magic the Gathering client? Wizards of the Coast have boat-loads of cash, I mean, it's coming out of their nostrils like someone who guffaws after drinking too much coke at a party. Yet their client looks terrible! People paying hundreds of dollars a month for digital copies of a collectible card game and using an interface that is just awful.
HiDPI would be nice, very nice. OGS is browser-based and should support it out of the box.
But as with chess, these clients have been build many years ago, and they (mostly) work fine. KGS is the best SGF editor on the planet, with (IMHO) GoGui coming a close second.
And GoPanda is nice, yes, they stuck a picture as a background and made nice rounded-corner boxes. But they got rid of all the screen real-estate! I'm on a 13 inch laptop and the board size is maybe 6 inches top to bottom. Where is the fullscreen board mode? Oh they don't have one. While I'm at it, where is the ability to output commands in the console (like viewing a profile) in a sensible format? They got rid of that too.
What I'm getting at here, is that we will value clarity of the board and speed and efficiency of the client over snazzy graphics.
I will admit that tablets are lagging behind for the UI (someone told me Tygem has a very nice client?) I personally find tablets annoying to play Go on. I can't concentrate, I misclick, or my opponent misclicks... I prefer a proper computer.
If I were to nitpick (as if I haven't done that enough with this post) I will say that using Tygem over Wine on Mac is a pain. I can't command-tab out of the program. At all. But if you're on Windows, hurrah! Play on Tygem. It has a nice UI and lots of strong players.
Yeah, as for FICS, Babas is still the way to go. But IMO you can make it look very sexy, you know how versatile it is. Panda 2 has 2 Fullscreen modes, but I reckon you want to get rid of all navigation elements etc.?
EUR 40 in Windows games is where the pain begins for me. As for Android, maybe the same I already payed for KGS, I think it was around the EUR 5 price tag. Depends.
Dated is not synonymous with bad. If something isn't broken then don't fix it. KGS performs all the functionality to easily play a game and review it afterwards and it is also an excellent tool to use for teach. Those are the things that count: not lots of flashy bells and whistles.
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).
I doubt there are many people who would not welcome a refresh of KGS, maybe some snazzier graphics and a more customizable interface, but in term of functionality the current client has everything a go player needs. I think the attempts to create modern clients have failed to produce an interface which provides as much functionality as KGS.
